Thank You for Your Last Sweet Goodbye.

A goodbye from a close friend after he had died a few hours earlier

…Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leaving footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same. -Flavia Weedn.

The doorbell rang and I looked out our breakfast room window, which is where I was sitting, and I saw that it was our neighbor, Bruce. “Hey, what’s up?” I said as I pushed open the storm door for him. He stepped in looking like he’d been working hard in his yard. He was dirty, wearing an old canvas hat over a sweat soaked t-shirt and baggy shorts. “Hey.” He said. “I’ve just mowed my yard and I’m leaving for Hiawatha as soon as I get cleaned. It’s Hannah’s birthday and Stacy’s having a party for her this afternoon, but I wanted you guys to know you can have the pool this weekend. I’ll be back late Monday.” “Oh great, thanks!” I said adding, “hey, have you changed it over to salt water yet?” “Oh yeah, it wasn’t that big a deal either.” My husband, Allen, appeared then with his laptop. “Do you want this before you go?” He asked and Bruce chuckled. “Ah yeah, I almost forgot, I’ve got to file my flight plan, so thanks.”

A short time later he came back to return it and I met him at the door. You all set?” I asked, as he handed me the laptop. “Yep, one of these days I’ll figure out how to get my new pc to accept this flight program so I can use my own so thanks. You guys are a lifesaver.” I smiled and said, “no problem, hey, you be careful up there.” He gave me a dismissive hand wave and said, “sure, I always am. See ya later Pam.”

We would never see him again.

The next morning I watched as the couple came up on our front porch and knocked on the storm door instead of ringing the camera doorbell. It was July 28th, 2019' and I wasn’t prepared to see anyone as it was barely nine am and I was still in the breakfast room drinking tea. I debated about not even answering the door, but then I did out of curiosity.

“Hi,” I said, forcing a smile. “Hey, I’m Nikki and this is my husband Chris. We live right over there,” she said pointing. “Our back yard shares a fence with Bruce. You’re Pam and Allen, right?” “Yeah,” I said, wondering where this was going. “Well, we just got some bad news.” At that point I invited them in. “Okay, so what’s going on?” I asked weakly. “Bruce was flying to his daughter Stacy’s yesterday and his plane crashed in a corn field not ten minutes out from the airfield and… I’m sorry, but he didn’t make it.”

“No! Oh god no that can’t be! He was just hear yesterday morning letting us know he was heading there.” She slowly shook her head and her husband’s eyes were sad and serious. I felt numb and my field of vision was narrowing. One of them took my arm and helped me to the closest chair. “Is your husband here?” The next thing I knew Nikki handed me a glass of water. “He’s not here.” I managed. “Should we call him?” Chris asked, but I told them he would be home soon and he couldn’t hear this over the phone. They sat down too and slowly began to fill me in.

I heard a close friend of Bruce had gotten a call from Heath, Bruce’s son in law, who had watched his plane go down. That friend had called this couple as he knew that they and Bruce had been spending a lot of time together. This couple then thought of my husband and I because Bruce had talked a lot about us and they knew how close we all were. I just listened as she said…”Heath was at the airfield waiting to pick him up so he could take him straight to the party. He said he saw Bruce wave at him from the cockpit and he waved back just before he began to bank the plane to line up for the landing. Heath then watched helplessly as he saw the plane continue to roll until it was upside down, and his heart sank. He knew Bruce was too low and going too slow to be able to correct it so he jumped in his car and floored it to get to him as quickly as he could. Unfortunately he only made a hundred feet or so before he heard the crash followed by an explosion.

The closer he got to a raging fire ball on the ground the more he realized Bruce was gone. He stopped driving and he just lost it while he tried to run across the corn field.

Bruce’s daughter Stacy and everyone she’d invited to her daughter’s birthday party were in the city’s park and they all heard and saw a small plane fly over, and then not long after they heard the explosion.

Somehow Stacy managed to convince herself it wasn’t her dad’s plane and she kept the party going for Hannah’s and the other kids’ sake…” I couldn’t stand to hear anymore so I nicely asked them to leave.

Above, Bruce in his twin engine Beech Baron.

I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I knew I was in shock so I went outside to the deck. Memories of times with Bruce flooded my mind as I sat down in our gazebo and looked over at his backyard and the vegetable garden he had meticulously planned and built into separate above ground plots many years ago. I saw lots of big ripe red tomatoes hanging from the vines just waiting to be picked.

Who would pick them and take care of everything now? He had singlehandedly kept his entire property looking like it belonged in BH&G magazine. Oh my god, would someone else move in there now? That thought crushed me.

We had become next door neighbors with him when we moved into our house in 1995.’ Bruce was a retired engineer who had worked for decades in the aircraft industry but he’d became self-employed and had been writing technical manuals at home for pilots to use. The irony of that wasn’t lost on me. This was nine months pre-COVID. Like most engineers he was one of the most detail minded people we had ever known and he was an excellent pilot so we knew the plane had malfunctioned, but we wanted answers. We needed them. I knew my husband felt like this, too, because he is also a private pilot.

And then it hit me that we would never hear the story from him of what had happened and that made me incredibly sad. My god, he was such a great story teller, but this story, the most important one of his life he wouldn’t be able to tell. Reality finally hit then and I felt my heart break.

When my husband got home I broke the horrible news to him and it hit him hard. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him cry. Later on he told me he knew Bruce was frantically trying to correct whatever went wrong with his plane right up until it crashed. I agreed, but I also knew he had crossed himself in those last futile seconds when he knew his death was eminent. His catholic faith was a big part of who he was.

It seemed so unreal now as I recalled how a couple of months earlier the three of us had agreed we couldn’t handle sitting outside in the heat around his pool anymore to share some libations while we swapped stories, so we would wait until early Fall.’ I had very much been looking forward to doing that again as it had become a yearly tradition for all of us. Now I had to face that would never happen just like we’d never again hear him say, “hold my beer, cause you ain’t gonna believe this,” which was how he started a lot of his stories.

When we moved in here he was married and they had three kids. They put in a pool that same year and just a few years later they sadly divorced. He often said that was the lowest point of his life. He hadn’t wanted the divorce and he stayed stuck in a sad emotional state to the point where we became worried about him.

I did what I could by inviting him over for dinner at least once a week and Allen went over and spent time with him on the weekends. He soon told us he’d be keeping the house so the kids would have it as stability. Their divorce had been hard on us, too, as we liked both of them.

He soon gave us an open invitation to come over and swim whenever we wanted, which we did frequently. His house was always open to us and his many other friends, too. He would always add, “and help yourself to any veggies.” He always planted enough to feed an army.

We took care of his place whenever he traveled which he began to do more often as the kids grew and then left for college and we were happy for him.

The news of his death hit a lot of people hard and the next few days were tough on everyone. We watched as the kids returned home and took over the daunting task of planning his funeral. They came over frequently with questions about how the irrigation system worked that he’d designed for the garden, and a myriad of other things. Bruce didn’t have a will. They didn’t have any of his friends contacts because his phone had been with him so we helped to locate the ones we knew.

We helped however we could right up until the time arrived for his funeral and we drove the four blocks to the Catholic church he’d belonged to for years. He had cooked at the wedding receptions of many of his friends’ kids in that church. His mother had taught all seven of her kids how to cook, but Bruce truly enjoyed it and he’d become quite the Chef.

He threw dinner parties every Spring’ that were amazing. We were invited to several of them and we enjoyed them as much as any meal we’d had in some of the 5 star restaurants we had dined at in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. He left behind quite a legacy.

The service was very emotional for nearly everyone and it was well attended considering it was at two pm on a Friday afternoon and it was for a sixty eight year old man. Even the priest remarked on what a wonderful man he must have been judging from the size of the crowd. All three of his kids went to the mic and spoke about him with great love and respect and with a lot of humor thrown in which Bruce would’ve appreciated as he loved to laugh and he loved his kids more than life itself.

No one made it through hearing the wonderful memories they shared of their dad without laughing until they cried. We didn’t calm down until we saw the pallbearers as they rolled his coffin out of the sanctuary. It was like we all collectively held our breaths as we watched his four brothers and his two son in laws slowly escort his floral draped bronze casket across the long white marbled floor of the narthex towards the waiting black limousine parked outside.

I’m pretty sure that by this time most people had heard that the rescuers had told the family that he’d died on impact. I couldn’t help but think he is not in there; the coffin was merely symbolic. They were almost certain he had already died before fire engulfed his plane. They weren’t able to recover much from the crash except charred pieces of what he’d taken with him, a wrapped birthday gift for his grand daughter, Hannah, two bottles of Stacy’s favorite wine and a duffle bag. After his casket disappeared we couldn’t take anymore so we left.

I had heard long ago that when someone dies without being able to say goodbye to their loved ones they will find a time and a way to do it, but I’d forgotten this. I knew my mom had returned for me the day after her funeral, but that had been over twenty years ago so it had slipped my mind. Bruce had done it too only I hadn’t realized it at the time until I realized it after we got home from the funeral…

He had come to say goodbye to us before his spirit moved on. I know this because I felt him although I didn’t know he was dead at that time. This was just a few hours after we had last seen him at our door.

At the time of his death I was in the kitchen when all of a sudden I saw him in my mind’s eye and the image was so real I got chills. I stopped whatever I was doing as I had the urge to go out on our deck so I could look over into his backyard. What I felt was concern or worry so I looked around for him there, but of course, I didn’t see him. The feeling wouldn’t stop so I walked around to his front yard and looked there, but the house looked deserted.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Like maybe he hadn’t left after all and maybe he had fallen in his backyard and he was needing help and he was telepathically reaching out, but since everything looked alright I went back home to shake it off. I mentioned this to my husband over lunch, but he told me he had seen his car leave the cul-de-sac which only added to my confusion.

After we returned home from the funeral, I went outside to be alone and I suddenly remembered those feelings I’d had and the image I’d had of him in my soul, in my intuition, and I knew then he had stopped by to tell us goodbye. I also now recalled now that when I had seen his face in those confusing moments his eyes were full of tears.

That’s when I realized he had been here and he had said “goodbye you guys. Take care. I’ve got to go even though I don’t want to. I’m so glad we were neighbors and that we became such good friends. I love you guys like family, but we’ll see each other again someday — I promise. Now hold my beer cause you ain’t gonna believe this.” It all made sense now.

We later heard he stopped by and said goodbye to his family, too, at the gravesite in Missouri. Stacy later told us that all of a sudden the wind came up and big drops of rain suddenly fell on them. She had whispered to the family, “dad’s here and he’s saying goodbye and these are his tears. He says I will always love you. Take care, my babies.” She told us the rain stopped in less than thirty seconds and although they all looked up no one could find even one small cloud in the sky.

Self published 8/21'